Tickets & Events

Boston Symphony Orchestra

With these concerts, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons opens a
two-week Brahms mini-festival traversing all four of the composer's
symphonies and his two piano concertos. In addition, these concerts
feature the world premieres of two brief, complementary works
commissioned for the occasion from the young American composers
Eric Nathan and Timo Andres. Nathan's piece begins the first of
these programs, which continues with the French pianist Hélène
Grimaud performing the intense, craggy Piano Concerto in D minor.
Brahms's First Symphony concludes the concerts of November 8 and
10; the Second Symphony completes the concerts of November 11 and
12.

Featured Performers

In 2017-18, his fourth season as the BSO's Ray and Maria Stata
Music Director, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra
in twelve wide-ranging subscription programs at Symphony Hall,
repeating three of them at New York's Carnegie Hall in March. Also
this season, in November, he and the orchestra tour Japan together
for the first time, playing concerts in Nagoya, Osaka, Kawasaki,
and Tokyo. In addition, in February 2018 Maestro Nelsons becomes
Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, in
which capacity he will bring both orchestras together for a unique
multi-dimensional alliance; under his direction, the BSO celebrates
its first "Leipzig Week in Boston" that same month. In the summer
of 2015, following his first season as music director, Andris
Nelsons' contract with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was extended
through the 2021-22 season. Following the 2015 Tanglewood season,
he and the BSO undertook a twelve-concert, eight-city tour to major
European capitals as well as the Lucerne, Salzburg, and Grafenegg
festivals. A second European tour, to eight cities in Germany,
Austria, and Luxembourg, took place in May 2016.

The fifteenth music director in the history of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons made his BSO debut at Carnegie
Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his BSO
subscription series debut in January 2013. His first CD with the
BSO-live recordings of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture and
Sibelius's Symphony No. 2-was released in November 2014 on BSO
Classics. April 2017 brought the release on BSO Classics of the
four Brahms symphonies with Maestro Nelsons conducting, recorded
live at Symphony Hall in November 2016. In an ongoing, multi-year
collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon initiated in 2014-15, he and
the BSO are making live recordings of Shostakovich's complete
symphonies, the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and other
works by the composer. The first release in this series (the
Symphony No. 10 and the Passacaglia from Lady Macbeth of
Mtsensk) won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral
Performance and Gramophone Magazine's Orchestral Award.
The second release (symphonies 5, 8, and 9, plus excerpts from
Shostakovich's 1932 incidental music to Hamlet) won the
2017 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. Also for Deutsche
Grammophon, Andris Nelsons is recording the Bruckner symphonies
with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Beethoven symphonies
with the Vienna Philharmonic.

In 2017-18, Andris Nelsons is artist-in-residence at the
Konzerthaus Dortmund and continues his regular collaboration with
the Vienna Philharmonic, leading that orchestra on tour to China.
He also maintains regular collaborations with the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, the
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Maestro Nelsons has also been a regular guest at the Bayreuth
Festival and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he
conducts a new David Alden production of Lohengrin this
season.

Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons
began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera
Orchestra before studying conducting. He was music director of the
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2015, principal
conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany,
from 2006 to 2009, and music director of Latvian National Opera
from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Nelsons is the subject of a 2013 DVD from
Orfeo, a documentary film entitled "Andris Nelsons: Genius on
Fire."

She could be called a Renaissance woman
for our times. Hélène Grimaud is not just a deeply passionate and
committed musical artist whose pianistic accomplishments play a
central role in her life. She is a woman with multiple talents that
extend far beyond the instrument she plays with such poetic
expression and peerless technical control. The French artist has
established herself as a committed wildlife conservationist, a
compassionate human rights activist and as a writer.

Grimaud was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence and began her piano
studies at the local conservatory with Jacqueline Courtin before
going on to work with Pierre Barbizet in Marseille. She was
accepted into the Paris Conservatoire at just 13 and won first
prize in piano performance a mere three years later. She continued
to study with György Sándor and Leon Fleisher until, in 1987, she
gave her well-received debut recital in Tokyo. That same year,
renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim invited her to perform with the
Orchestre de Paris.

This marked the launch of Grimaud's musical career, characterised
ever since by concerts with most of the world's major orchestras
and many celebrated conductors. Her recordings have been critically
acclaimed and awarded numerous accolades, among them the Cannes
Classical Recording of the Year, Choc du Monde de la musique,
Diapason d'or, Grand Prix du disque, Record Academy Prize (Tokyo),
Midem Classic Award and the Echo Award.

Between her debut in 1995 with the Berliner Philharmoniker under
Claudio Abbado and her first performance with the New York
Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 1999 - just two of many notable
musical milestones - Grimaud made a wholly different kind of debut:
in upper New York State she established the Wolf Conservation
Center.

Her love for the endangered species was sparked by a chance
encounter with a wolf in northern Florida; this led to her
determination to open an environmental education centre. "To be
involved in direct conservation and being able to put animals back
where they belong," she says, "there's just nothing more
fulfilling." But Grimaud's engagement doesn't end there: she is
also a member of the organisation Musicians for Human Rights, a
worldwide network of musicians and people working in the field of
music to promote a culture of human rights and social change.

For most people, establishing and running an environmental
organisation or having a flourishing career as a musician would be
accomplishment enough. Yet, remarkably, Hélène Grimaud has also
found time to pursue writing, publishing three books that have
appeared in various languages. Her first, Variations
Sauvages, appeared in 2003. It was followed in 2005
by Leçons particulières, and in 2013
by Retour à Salem, both semi-autobiographical
novels.

Despite her divided dedication to these multiple passions, it is
through Grimaud's thoughtful and tenderly expressive music-making
that she most deeply touches the emotions of audiences.
Fortunately, they have been able to enjoy her concerts worldwide,
thanks to the extensive tours she undertakes as a soloist and
recitalist. She is also an ardent and committed chamber musician
who performs frequently at the most prestigious festivals and
cultural events with a wide range of musical collaborators,
including Sol Gabetta, Thomas Quasthoff, Rolando Villazón, Jan
Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen and the Capuçon brothers.

Recent performance highlights have included two collaborations
with the Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon -
firstly, tears become… streams become…, a large-scale
immersive installation at New York's historic Park Avenue Armory,
whose Drill Hall floor was flooded to become an immense field of
water, and secondly, Neck of the Woods, a piece
devised for the Manchester International Festival combining music,
visual art and theatre, in which Grimaud shared the stage with
legendary actress Charlotte Rampling. She also appeared at the
opening-night gala of the new Philharmonie de Paris and gave two
summer concerts at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (New
York State) in her role as 2015 Artist-in-Residence. Her recital at
the Philharmonie Essen in May, meanwhile, was crowned by the award
of the 2015 Klavier-Festival Ruhr Prize, honouring her exceptional
career and extraordinary artistry.

In her diary for the 2015/16 season are appearances with Valery
Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra at St Petersburg's White Nights
Festival and at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden's Summer Festival.
She plays Beethoven with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di
Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano and Brahms with the
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. She also
tours Asia and Europe, playing concertos by Ravel, Brahms and
Mozart and giving a recital programme inspired by water.

In 2016, Grimaud released Water, a live recording of
the performances from tears become… streams
become… which brings together works by nine composers:
Berio, Takemitsu, Fauré, Ravel, Albéniz, Liszt, Janáček, Debussy,
and Nitin Sawhney, who has written seven shortWater
Transitions for the album as well as producing it.
Grimaud has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since
2002, and Water follows the September 2013
release of her album of the two Brahms piano concertos, the first
concerto with Andris Nelsons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra and the second recorded with the Vienna
Philharmonic. Classic FM said: "Hélène Grimaud
turns her thrilling, deeply personal brand of music-making to
Brahms's first and second Piano Concertos. Throughout her playing
is sensitive, graceful, and commanding without ever feeling
forced." Limelightmagazine called it an "utterly
remarkable, inspired and inspiring recording".

Duo, the album she recorded with cellist Sol Gabetta just
prior to the Brahms concertos, won the 2013 ECHO Award for "chamber
recording of the year". Previous releases include her readings of
Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 19 and 23 on a 2011 disc
which also featured a collaboration with singer Mojca Erdmann in
the same composer's Ch'io mi scordi di te?.Grimaud's
2010 release, the solo recital album Resonances,
showcased music by Mozart, Berg, Liszt and Bartók, while her other
DG recordings include a selection of Bach's solo and concerto
works, in which she directed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
from the piano; a Beethoven disc with the Staatskapelle Dresden and
Vladimir Jurowski which was chosen as one of history's greatest
classical music albums in the iTunes "Classical Essentials"
series; Reflection and Credo (both
of which feature a number of thematically linked works); a Chopin
and Rachmaninov Sonatas disc; a Bartók CD on which she plays the
Third Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under
Pierre Boulez; and a DVD release of Rachmaninov's Second Piano
Concerto with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under the direction of
Claudio Abbado.

Hélène Grimaud is undoubtedly a multi-faceted artist. Her deep
dedication to her musical career, both in performances and
recordings, is reflected and reciprocally amplified by the scope
and depth of her environmental and literary pursuits.